Merklappen

“Old samplers tell a story, a language of solidarity with the domestic hearth, women and girls who did what their hands felt to do and expressed this with patience and great ingenuity in small cross-stitches, often embroidered on self-spun and woven linen. A ‘small’ world opens up to us, usually hidden behind initials, sometimes behind a name and name and sometimes a place name. And it is precisely in that anonymity that our samplers speak: they tell about the house and the church, as a rule each placed in a corner at the bottom of the lap, of marriage, with as symbol the wedding boat, the parents on the deck and the children somewhere in the put; every doll a child so that we can now see how many children were born from a marriage.
And then the work of the housewife: the cooking pots, jugs, fruit baskets, the hearth, the spinning wheel and the churn are told. The man is immortalized in cross-stitch beside his spade, which he will manage to handle in daily life. He sits on the buck and ment the horses, cares for the cattle and for the countless chickens and cockerels that occur on our samplers. Proudly he stands with his wife in the door of his mill. “(From the introduction)